Shaun Hunter was with his daughters — Eva, 10, and Ruby, 12 — all wearing kitten ears like the star of the show when the house lights went on. He called the rush of concertgoers after the explosion “a stampede”.

“I saw one bloke carrying his daughter. She was bleeding,” Hunter told The Times of London.

Ellie Ward, 17, made his way out of the arena after the blast, and found his 64-year-old grandfather, who had been waiting for him when the explosion happened.

“He said he only realised what had happened when he felt the side of his head and it was bleeding,” the younger Ward told The Guardian newspaper.

“He’s OK but he’s cut his cheek,” she said. “They said he had severed an artery. A lot of glass shattered on him.”

“Everyone was screaming and running,” Robert Tempkin, 22, told The Times. “There were coats and people’s phones on the floor. People just dropped everything.”

Elena Semino and her husband were waiting by the arena ticket office for her daughter when the explosion went off.

“My husband and I were standing against the wall, luckily, and all of a sudden there was this thing,” she told The Guardian. “I can’t even describe it. There was this heat on my neck and when I looked up there were bodies everywhere.”

Despite wounds to her neck and a leg, Semino dashed into the auditorium in search of her daughter while her husband, who had only a minor injury, stayed behind to help an injured woman. She found her daughter Natalie, 17, and her friends safe.